Geographic political divides in countries

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

Australia's a funny one actually.

Since, unlike the US as a whole what defines our politics is primarily economic issues, not social ones.

Plus there are vast tracks of land where the there is one representative for an area the size of western europe - but serves a population of only about 80,000.

Apart from those the cities are in a kind of ring system.

The centre of the cities generally tend to be more cosmopolitan and vote for the Labor Party (feeding off Green votes) then you move into the more affluent suburbs to the north, south, east and inner west who vote the conservative Liberal Party - then there's another block, this is particularly true for Sydney and Melbourne of what is known as the mortgage belt. These are people who were, more than likely raised in solid working class Labor voting families - who because of the Liberals ability to keep interest rates lower than under Labor (this IMHO was the SOLE reason Howard won in 2004), they vote Liberal even if they don't support Liberal social policy. The same is true for the "affluent" Liberal voters especially in Sydney's North Shore and Eastern Suburbs and Melbourne's inner East. They are usually very "liberal" on social issues, gay rights, immigration, arts funding amongst others - but since they keep taxes low, they vote Liberal.

Then there's the Liberals coalition partners the country based Nationals - who only win in Queensland, New South Wales and Northern Victoria.